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Christmas shopping at your Extension office
By Rick Snell Barton County Extension Agent, agriculture Kansas It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! No, we don't have a bunch of snow on the ground, although we need the moisture really bad. Many of us are hoping and praying for it. But hey, how often do we have snow on the ground in the Golden Belt? Snow or not, Christmas is coming. The temperatures have certainly been more winter like the past week or so. Many people have their lights and decorations up. It's time to get that Christmas gift shopping done if you haven't already. By the way, I haven't. If you still haven't got something for the farmer in your life, I've got some items that are free or cheap that can really be useful. Even if you don't want to call them gifts, these are useful items for any farmer throughout the year. The first item that I'll mention is the one year-end special that we always have and that's the small red beef books. They are a red pocket sized cow-calf calendar booklet. These make great stocking-stuffers or regular low-cost gifts. Each pocket calendar has a complete cattle record keeping section including gestation table, pasture usage, calving and weight details, cow health recorder for shots, and breeding records. It is a good book for carrying with you to the pasture or when you feed. You can identify which calves go with which cows and record ear tag numbers right then. There is also a telephone number-address section in the back for people you need to contact frequently. These books have been very popular the last few years. We have a very limited supply and they sell for $5. We also have a free beef calving record book, that is not as detailed and has less information but still allows you to keep calf record. We have several for sale publications for $5 or less including, Diagnosing Wheat Production Problems, Diagnosing Corn Production Problems, Diagnosing Sorghum Production Problems and a new one called Pocket Guide To Crop Development. The next one may not be worthy as a gift but it could be. It is the Kansas Farm Account Book. If you still do your books with a pencil (there's nothing wrong with that), these are a necessity for the farmer. These sell for $3 each. The Kansas Farm Account Book is a loose leaf system with pages for receipts, expenses, inventories, crop, and livestock records for a full calendar or fiscal year. The categories are set up to follow the Federal Income Tax Farm Schedule. Extra pages can be added or removed easily. There is a binder available as well. This is the last "cost" item I will mention in this article. All the others are free. While on the subject of account books, we also offer family account books for keeping your records and budgets. We have 3 versions of this. We have a bound 8.5- by 11-inch version for a measly $1.10. Then we have a few copies of old version legal sized loose leaf for $3. The only difference between the new, which is $5, and the old is higher cost to us when re-printed and the old ones still say 19__ instead of 20__ for the year. Other items include copies of production handbooks from K-State on corn, wheat, grain sorghum, soybeans, alfalfa, and sunflowers. We have two different sizes of pesticide record keeping books that will help farmers comply with the pesticide record law. Again, these items are all free for the asking. More for sale items at the Extension office Most of the material that we have at the county extension office is free through K-State. However there are a few "heavy artillery" items that we have to order and charge for. These items are available the year round and it would be "nip and tuck" whether we could get them here by Christmas. We have a number of crop, livestock, and home buildings and facilities planning booklets through the Midwest Plan Service catalog. These range in price from $3-$20 each. You are welcome to stop by and look at the catalog or any of the booklets that we have on hand. Other pay publications ranging from 50 cents to $12 are available to look at. These range from information on grain marketing to septic system management. One particular book that is very good is Steve Watson's "Wheat Varieties For Kansas". This is updated every year and sells for $8.50. Unfortunately, we do not have any on hand now and probably needs to be ordered between July and September. Weeds of Nebraska and the Great Plains is a book with over 500 colorful pictures of common weeds with written details about each and how to identify them. Range and Pasture Plants is an excellent resource with color photos from Fort Hays State University. A third weed identification guide is the Weeds of the West. These range in price from $20 to $35. Then we get into the 3-ring loose leaf notebooks that can be purchased and periodically updated. The first one is the Kansas Farm Management and Marketing Handbook. It contains crop and livestock budgets plus many financial management tools such as income statements, cash flow sheets, balance sheets, marketing pamphlets and other information sheets. Its cost is $75 for the notebook and 3 years worth of updates. Then there are four livestock manuals in 3-ring form. We have one for the production of beef cattle, horse, swine and sheep. They range from $20 to $60 in price. Each has hundreds of fact sheets on nutrition, breeds and breeding, health and management. Some are available on CD-ROM. I'd like to wish all of my readers a Merry Christmas from the staff of the Kansas State University Research and Extension--Barton County Office. Date: 12/11/07
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